Front Row - 22/07/2009

Arts news and reviews. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds star in the new comedy The Proposal, about a high-powered publisher who forces her assistant to marry her so that she can avoid deportation. Their plan goes awry as they travel to Alaska to meet his family. Natalie Haynes reviews the film. Hanif Kureishi's novel The Black Album is set in 1989, the year when the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie and Prince was in the music charts. In a co-production between the National Theatre and Tara Arts, Kureishi has now created a stage version of his story about a young Asian student who finds his ideals and ambitions challenged when he meets a group of anti-racists and radical Muslims at college. Critic Sarfraz Manzoor reviews the play. The American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver has created a fictional blog - The Chilton Report - with online clues to accompany his latest thriller featuring Special Agent Kathryn Dance. Roadside Crosses features a series of victims' graves marked with crosses and a criminal who inhabits the cyber world. Deaver discusses the influence of changing technology on crime fiction. Roadside Crosses is out in hardback from tomorrow. The British actress Haydn Gwynne is currently on Broadway starring in Billy Elliot The Musical in a role which has involved her learning to skip and tapdance at the same time, and working with a lot of children. She talks about the difference between US and UK audiences and how a 1984 Geordie mining strike is more relevant to Americans today than ever.